Commuters Take It Slow After First Snow Of The Season

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Some drivers started their commute early Friday as many streets around the area remained slick with snow and ice.

Andrea Fujii reports there were dozens of crashes Thursday, but troopers say there weren’t major injuries.

The first snow of the winter caused some fender benders, fired up the salt trucks, and even closed schools early.

Private contractors are back to winter work.

“It’s hard to plow, there’s not enough snow to plow, but it’s still dangerous enough where you have to get some salt down and keep the stores open,” said Jason Ashburn, contractor.

Roads are still slick from the small accumulation that stuck, then melted throughout the day Thursday.

Some 1,500 salt trucks were out across Maryland state highways, continuing to work into the night.

“Salt is effective only to about 20 degrees, so we’re combining salt with salt brine and that makes the salt more effective to negative 6 Fahrenheit,” said Laura Racowski, State Highway Administration.

“It took me an hour and a half to get home where normally it would take me about a half hour, 45 minutes,” said Sean Johnson of Towson.

“I’m paranoid because I fell two years ago and broke my arm in three places on the ice, so I don’t take any chances with ice anymore,” said Carla Perott, driver.

For those who didn’t expect to see this much—they want more time to recover from the previous winter.

“I was coming from basketball practice and there all of the snow was,” said Jim Meil. “So it was kind of wild. But I’m not ready for it, though.”

Some say the snow came too early.

“Yeah, too soon,” Meil said. “Maybe let’s wait until Christmas Eve.”

State highway trucks will remain out Friday morning to make the morning commute as easy as possible.